This Place is Not for Sissies

Lechanptom in Gloucester, England is a rural district where urban development sits comfortably alongside open farmland. The original name Lechametone meant ‘the homestead where garlic grows’, which people used to scare off evil spirits with. Kidnappers Lane leads away from suburbia to an old farmstead where there are traces of a Saxon defensive moat.

It could have been a house where crooks held kidnapped royal heirs in the wild old days of Merry England. Lechanptom is definitely not for sissies in several ways. In 1894, a farmer fenced off public footpaths and built a cottage on the site of the local funfair. Ten thousand protesters tore it down. We think the farmer was lucky not to go down Kidnappers Lane himself, especially since he owned it.